December 2007

December 30, 2007

Doug Glanville played Major League Baseball from 1996 to 2004, right at the heart of the "Steroids Era". I found this article of his particularly insightful.

At the heart of Optimal Training is the distinction between being "the best" and being "your best". The problem lies in how the rewards for success are doled out. We certainly get rewarded when we do "our best". We gain confidence, we expand our horizons, we inspire others, and we learn from the journey to reach that point. All great things. But they don't pay the bills.

Material rewards, the kind you can pay your mortgage with, go to the person who is "the best". In fact, the rewards for being "almost the best" are significantly less than those for "the best" (The Economics of Superstars). The second best player during Michael Jordan's era didn't get nearly the salary, endorsements, or fame that MJ did. Thinking of runners, I'd be very curious to know the difference in earnings between Kenenisa Bekele and Zersenay Tadesse or Sileshi Sihine. Or even Ryan Hall and Brian Sell.

In any case, I believe this is really a question of how an individual deals with failure (or even the potential for failure). What makes one person capable of making the daily choice to accept "her best" whether it is enough or not, and another person incapable of accepting that kind of (potential) "failure"?

Obviously there is no one answer. How an individual arrives at that point and makes their decision is the result of multiple causes, all of which are interrelated and go back throughout their personal history. But I can't help but sit here and think that if everyone adopted an Optimal Training mindset -- if they really took the Optimal Training Principles to heart -- we would see people much more prepared to avoid the shortcuts, accept failures as opportunities, and preserve the integrity of whatever it is they are doing.

Because in the end, if you don't have your integrity, what do you have?

December 23, 2007

I recently came across this link to an essay on how different people behave in certain situations (thanks Ramit). While the essay uses computer science to drive its point, it is certainly applicable to any aspect of life, and particularly to running.

The author classifies people into two groups: perfection-oriented and performance-oriented. Here is the description of perfection-oriented people:

The people in the category perfection-oriented have a natural
intellectual curiosity. They are constantly searching for better
ways of doing things, new methods, new tools. They search for
perfection, but they take pleasure in the search itself, knowing
perfectly well that perfection can not be accomplished. To the people
in this category, failure is a normal part of the strive for
perfection. In fact, failure gives a deeper understanding of
why a particular path was unsuccessful, making it possible to
avoid similar paths in the future.

This description includes elements of many of the Optimal Training Principles I write about on this blog. We see active engagement, the willingness to make mistakes, ability as something variable (not constant), that progress is time-dependent, and the fact that success is part attitude, part effort, and part method.

Here is the description of performance-oriented people:

The people in the category performance-oriented on the contrary, do
not at all strive for perfection. Instead they have a need to achieve
performance immediately. Such performance leaves no time for
intellectual curiosity. Instead, techniques already known to them
must be applied to solve problems. To these people, failure is a
disaster whose sole feature is to harm instant performance. Similarly,
learning represents the possibility of failure and must thus be
avoided if possible. To the people in this category, knowledge in
other people also represents a threat. As long as everybody around
them use tools, techniques, and methods that they themselves know,
they can count on outperforming these other people. But when the
people around them start learning different, perhaps better, ways,
they must defend themselves. Other people having other knowledge
might require learning to keep up with performance, and learning, as
we pointed out, increases the risk of failure. One possibility for
these people is to discredit other people's knowledge. If done well,
it would eliminate the need for the extra effort to learn, which would
fit very well with their objectives.

We've all known people like this. Heck, in some aspect of our lives, we've probably all been this person before. As much as I try to motivate myself to be better at running, learning, working, ... , the fact is that what I am battling is my tendency to be the above.

I encourage you to take a moment and really think about how you approach your running. Do you tend to think like a performance-oriented person or a perfection-oriented person? Are there areas for improvement?

December 22, 2007

My good friend Jon is attempting to make the Olympics in the 1500m next year. He's started a blog on the topic. His second post
was about undergoing a day of Navy Seal training and how it took him to
his physical and emotional limits. It's a great read, and very
inspirational.

It reminded me about the race in which I reached my limits, and the benefits it gave me throughout the rest of my career.

Finding My Limit

My junior season at UCLA, we came down from our summer training camp in Mammoth Lakes, CA and we drove directly to San Diego to run an 8k race. I was in very good shape and had high hopes for the race. Our team implemented a pack strategy wherein we ran together for the first 3 miles, and then finished the race running as fast as we could.

When the race started, our pack didn't get out as well as we wanted and we ended up running a little slower than expected. I have to admit, it still felt fast to my legs having just come down from 8,000 feet. When we hit the 3 mile marker, we were WAY back, somewhere around 100th place. So with a couple other teammates at my side, I took off to catch as many people as I could.

Then, a funny thing happened. People didn't come back to me very quickly. In the next mile I ran hard and passed a lot of guys, but there were still way too many people in front of me. And I was feeling tired. I had to push, though. I was expecting to be one of the top guys in the race.

Over the course of the next mile I just kept passing people. I was getting more and more fatigued but I kept going. Doubt continued to creep into my mind but I blocked it out and kept telling myself to "Go!" Gradually, the pack in front of me thinned and I could only see a string of individual runners ahead of me.

About 600 meters from the end of the race I started getting light-headed. But I figured I was in about 20th place and had to catch at least 10 more guys. So I pushed even harder. I caught three more guys and then I started to black out. The only thing keeping me conscious was the pain, which was bad. I was still at least 200 meters from the finish. One last time I pushed. When I crossed the finish line, I saw black and then realized people were walking me through the chute.

Then the pain really hit. It was different from anything I'd ever felt. It wasn't my chest or my legs. It was coming from everywhere. It emanated from somewhere deep. It was cellular. My head started hammering and I started dry heaving. My knees were at once too painful to move and too wobbly to keep still.

For the next 30 minutes I walked around in a daze as people came up to congratulate me. It turns out I had moved up to 6th place over the final two miles. I couldn't think about that, though. I was struggling just to stay upright and keep moving. Ordinarily I would have done a cooldown, but every time I tried to jog I got light-headed and tunnel vision crept in. I ended up walking for 30 minutes and then I sat under a tree and fell asleep for the duration of the women's race.

Later that day, after we drove back home to LA, I got physically sick. Anything I ate came back up and I literally slept the rest of the day. For two days afterward I felt terrible, with sore muscles, unresponsive legs, and a mild headache.

But that race was the best thing that could have happened to me.

What I Learned

My final time in the race was not particularly fast. I ran 25:50 or so. For that much pain, you would have thought such a time would have actually hurt my self-efficacy. "You hurt that bad running that slow?!" But that's not what happened.

I had reached my limit. I had taken my body to a place it had never felt before, and that became the default against which I judged how I felt in any race afterward. The result: I was able to push myself harder and harder in the middle of races, knowing that until I started feeling like I did that weekend in San Diego, I was going to be just fine. Later during the year, when I was in the PAC-10 Championships and our team passed the 3-mile marker near 30th place, I knew I was going to be able to move up and be successful (I finished 8th). In the District Championships, with an extra 2k in the course, I crossed the 3-mile marker in 70th place and when people started coming back to me, I had the extra confidence of knowing there was another level of pain I would be able to push myself to if necessary. I ended up 10th.

In short, I didn't so much learn how fast I could run in San Diego, but what I could endure. And as the season progressed, I realized that no matter how fast I was running, I never felt as bad as I did that day. And so I was continually able to push myself harder and get better results. I have no doubt that my performance in San Diego was directly responsible for my ability to move up throughout my future races and eventually qualify as an individual for the NCAA Championships. From a statistically average race, I learned the most important lesson for my future success.

You Need to Find Your Limit

In the course of every athlete's training, there comes a time when it's necessary to find your limits. This could be in a race, in a practice (think Quentin Cassady's repeat 400s in Once a Runner), or outside of running altogether. The result is the same in all cases, though. Knowing how much you can really handle puts everything else you do into a different perspective. Quite frankly, it all gets easier.